


Help Me Remember

by EllaWorm11



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: author did zero research, author is not new at this but also is, joe/ nicky is referenced, probably not canon compliant, this is between joe and booker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25405351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaWorm11/pseuds/EllaWorm11
Summary: Joe finds Booker earlier than either of them were expecting.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 50
Kudos: 802





	Help Me Remember

Booker wandered alongside the canal. He didn’t really have a route to follow right now; he had coffee in hand and nowhere to be, so he had decided to spend the morning outside. It was a clear, cool day, the sun warming his face and the coffee warming his fingers. The kind of quiet, lazy morning he should’ve been spending listening to records or reading aloud with Andy while they both pretended not to hear how Nicky and Joe spent their morning lie-ins. 

But Booker wasn’t with Andy, or Nicky, or Joe, or Nile even. He was alone. 

It had been three years since he watched the four of them walk away, and it would be another 97 before he joined them again. He kicked an empty paper cup along the path, remembering. He started to keep walking before he paused to grab the cup, pretending not to hear Nicky muttering about litter in his head as he did so. There was a garbage can two steps to his left anyway. He tossed the trash and his own now- empty cup, and turned back to the path. 

And stopped. 

Because there was Joe. 

Booker blinked. He looked away, and then at his feet, and then back at the bench, but that was still Joe. On a bench to the right of the path, facing the canal so that his back was to Booker, and it wasn’t just someone with similar curly dark hair. It was Joe. Booker stepped up behind the bench, and then he hesitated. 

“You know I know you’re there.” 

Booker’s breath caught in his throat; he hadn’t realized, or had refused to admit, how much he missed his friend. He hesitated again, and finally sank onto the bench next to Joe. 

They sat in silence for a minute, Booker looking at Joe and looking away, and Joe staring firmly ahead at the canal. Booker held his breath. He wanted to ask where Nicky was, where Andy and Nile were, whether Joe was here alone, if the others knew. But he bit his tongue and waited for Joe. 

“They stuck knives in Nicky.” Joe said finally. Booker turned to watch him, but Joe kept watching the water. “They stuck pins in his chest to see if his body would heal around them or push them out. And when the pins fell out, they stabbed him. They stabbed Nicky again and again and again, just to time how long it took his body to push them out. And every time I screamed they killed me.” There was fury and pain and exhaustion drawn across Joe’s face, and Booker wanted to look away but knew he couldn’t. “Nicky would groan and I would scream at these torturers and they would slice my throat or stop my heart or inject me with some poison and they’d time how long I took to breathe again.” Booker could taste the tears running down his face, and still he watched Joe watch the water. “I woke up and Nicky had knives between each of his ribs, and before I could scream he said “ _ My heart, don’t, don’t make me watch you die again. _ ””

Here Joe went quiet. Booker finally looked away, leaned his elbows on his knees and fixed his eyes on his own clasped hands. He wished he still had his coffee cup, just for something to hold. 

“I’m sorry, Joe.” Booker hated how broken his voice sounded. He coughed, and tried again. “I’m so sorry. And I know… I know that’ll never be enough. I regret it. And I’m sorry I refused to remember that I had you, and Nicky, and Andy. I know it’ll never be enough, and it sounds pathetic compared to the hurt I caused.” Booker swallowed, and met Joe’s eyes again. “I’m so sorry.” 

Joe held his gaze, and Booker held his breath. They had known each other for two hundred years, but at this moment Booker had no idea what was happening behind Joe’s eyes. He held his breath and waited for Joe to say something.

“Nile found the book.” 

That wasn’t what Booker was expecting. 

Joe turned back to the water. “It was at the mine with Andy’s stuff, I guess you left it for safekeeping?” Booker nodded. “Mice and mold got to it, it was so ruined it took us a minute to figure out what it was.” Booker’s heart sank. He looked back at his clasped hands as he felt Joe’s gaze on his face, and he knew they were both remembering all the books. 

It had started a few years after Andy and Nicky and Joe had found him. They’d been camped out in some remote woods on a warm fall night, and Booker had woken up gasping in a cold sweat to find Joe the only one awake, keeping watch by a small fire. Joe had nodded as Booker sat near him, and he’d listened as Booker whispered his nightmare. It had started out as the kind of dream he hoped for: a dream of before, of a day in the sun in peaceful times, dancing with his wife while their children played around them. But gradually the faces of his family had faded, until they were just blank. He’d woken up realizing that one day he would truly forget their voices, their laughter, their faces. He’d forget them. The next night when he woke up from the same dream-turned-nightmare, Joe was again sitting by the fire. This time when Booker sat next to him, Joe picked up a piece of charcoal and flipped to the empty back pages of a book he had with him. “Tell me about your wife.” Joe had said, and Booker had described her eyes, her hair, her smile, the way her hands folded into his, the way she sang to their children, the mischievous sparkle she had. 

That’s how it had started. Joe had ripped out the pages and given them to Booker, and Booker had kept them tucked against his chest. The next time they were in a market, Joe had returned with an empty notebook. Every night Booker woke up and found Joe awake, Joe took out the notebook and set to filling it with Booker’s family: his wife, his children, all of them together and happy and safe. Booker carried that first notebook with him everywhere until it got riddled with bullet holes and stained with blood and sweat. Then Booker had bought two new empty notebooks and offered them to Joe, asking nervously if he could fill one with Booker’s family again. This had continued through the two centuries that followed, so that every few years Joe and Booker would sit side by side as Booker described his family and Joe faithfully brought them to the page. Booker was sure Joe could have drawn these people he had never met without his help, but he always waited to hear Booker’s descriptions, knowing it was part of the remembering as much as the finished product. 

Booker knew exactly where he had left the last notebook, but he had been too ashamed to go retrieve it. He had missed it’s presence every moment of the last three years, the pain of that empty space outdone only by the pain of the absence of Andy and Nicky and Joe and Nile. An absence that he had only himself to blame for. 

“Tell me about your wife.”

Booker froze, still tense, still staring at his hands. Joe had never teased him about the drawings, had never been cruel about Booker’s loss or longing, but Booker knew what he had done and how much hurt he had caused and how protective Joe was and he couldn’t bring himself to believe Joe would move on this easily. 

“Tell me about your wife, and your kids.” Joe whispered again, and this time Booker looked up at him. Joe was watching him, waiting as he always had, balancing a fresh notebook on his knee and holding new charcoal. 

So Booker did, as he had before, and more. If Joe was giving him a second chance, he would take it and he would be honest. He let himself empty all of his loneliness onto Joe, and Joe emptied it back onto the pages. They stayed on the bench until the morning turned to afternoon and Booker could hear Joe’s stomach growling but every time he paused, trying to give Joe a chance to leave, Joe just prodded him towards another memory. Finally, Joe closed the notebook. They’d filled half the pages, together. Booker tried not to think about what the empty half meant as Joe sighed and stood.

“I will never understand why you did it, because you’re right, I’ve always had Nicky.” Joe looked at the notebook he was still holding and ran his fingers along the edge of the pages. He sighed again and held the notebook out. “We miss you, Booker.” Joe said softly as Booker took the notebook, and then he turned, pushed his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and walked away. 

Booker watched Joe’s back until he vanished from sight, and then he stared at the empty spot on the bench where his friend had been until the light began to fade. Eventually he stood and tucked the notebook against his body and walked back to his empty flat, alone. 

That night, Booker awoke gasping from a dream-turned-nightmare. He stared at the ceiling until he could breathe again, and then he got up and turned on the kitchen light. He’d left the notebook from Joe on the table, and now he sank into a chair to open it for the first time since Joe left him by the water, alone, again. 

Slowly, gingerly, he turned the pages and let himself cry. He remembered his family and how badly he wanted to join them, so badly he was willing to betray the only people left in the world who cared for him and whom he cared about. He turned the pages and remembered all the times with his wife and his children and he remembered all the times sitting in the dark as Booker talked and Joe drew. He remembered, and he tried to slow down and savor these memories as he reached the spot where he knew Joe had closed the book. 

But the empty pages never came. 

Instead, Booker turned a page, and he found himself looking at a much more recent memory. It was Andy, and himself sitting next to her, Andy smiling and savoring a piece of baklava as the charcoal version of Booker grinned and listened to her name the flavors. 

Booker felt his heart catch and felt his tears start to come harder. He turned another page and found Nile with the expression she’d worn for so much of dinner that first night Andy brought her home, all wide eyes and stubbornness. Another page and there was Andy again, this time an old memory, from a job in Rotterdam sometime around 1905. The next page showed Nicky, so perfectly rendered that Booker half expected him to start talking, sitting next to Booker at a rickety table, and he knew Joe had remembered the three-hour debate the three of them had had over proper coffee drinking practices. Every page was filled with the four of them, and although Joe hadn’t drawn himself he could still be felt in every memory, on every page. Booker kept turning the pages, kept letting himself remember and feel and regret and long for his friends, to the end of the notebook. Until the last page. 

There, at the end of the book, Joe had left a note. 

“We are your family too. Don’t forget it again. We forgive you. We love you. Come back when you’re ready.” 

**Author's Note:**

> It's 2020 and I'm trying this crazy new thing called "do things you enjoy and get serotonin from it" and so far that's meant rewatch this movie and word dump about it. Hurrah for new fandoms I guess?  
> I really did do zero research for this, whereas I would normally have at least read up about the comics. I feel firmly meh about it but it does feel good to write things.


End file.
